O’Sullivan needs to come up with convincing narrative to survive

The more she digests comments from the Opposition, the Government and the Policing Authority, the more Garda Commissioner Nóirín O'Sullivan must feel like the main character in Vladimir Nabokov's novel 'Invitation to a Beheading'.

Of course, as the novel progresses, the unfortunate hero discovers that the person being about to die is himself.

The tenor of the prose over the past 48 hours is unmistakable. While nobody in Government has expressed anything other than confidence in her, the confidence just seems to be of the same variety as that uttered by chairmen of football clubs hours before the manager gets sacked.

So where are we now? All of the Opposition parties no longer have confidence in Ms O’Sullivan. The Policing Authority issued a very flinty statement yesterday expressing disappointment about the tardiness in letting it know about the gross exaggeration of its breath test figures. The statement also made it quite clear that the authority was not pleased with the quality of information it had passed, or indeed the absence of information.

Position of parties on left/right spectrum ‘does not influence voters’

---

Miriam Lord: Enda’s talk of Garda reform fails to take root

---

Ring offloads management of rural post offices to Naughten

---

Oireachtas committee split on prosecutions for wasting water

---

As of now, there are three private members' motions of confidence being tabled by Sinn Féin, the Solidarity-PBP and the Labour Party. The problem is that none of those will get an airing until May. This is our lead story today.

In any instance, it will be the Government and not parliament which will decide the commissioner's fate. It must be noted that for the first time, the Policing Authority has a role in this process. The authority can recommend dismissal to Government on three specific grounds. A lot of power resides in Josephine Feehily and her colleagues, which should not be underestimated.

The commissioner has not bowed to the intensifying pressure so far and still clings on to her position. The next big test for her is tomorrow when she will appear before the Justice Committee to face a grilling on the matter. It has been slipping away from her for the past week. She needs to come up with a convincing and comprehensive narrative tomorrow if she is to survive.

B-Day

Well, after what seems like an eternity of positioning and manoeuvring, the day has finally dawned when Brexit will be triggered.

Later this morning, British prime minister Theresa May will formally trigger the process, staring off a battle of will that will take two years. There will be a swift response from the EU and from its members and within two days the president of the European Council, Donald Tusk, will issue guidelines to the remaining 27 member states.

We will first see the terms of the negotiations after the crucial council meeting on April 29th.

Ms May used emollient language yesterday but no amount of sugar-coating could hide a truly hard choice.

“We all want to live in a truly global Britain that gets out and builds relationships with old friends and new allies around the world,” she will say.

"These are the ambitions of this government's plan for Britain. Ambitions that unite us, so that we are no longer defined by the vote we cast, but by our determination to make a success of the result." Here is London Editor Denis Staunton's report.

Politics has witnessed some very reactionary results in the past few years. A reminder of that was the very damaging decision yesterday by US president Donald Trump to use an executive order reversing Obama-era policies which prevented harmful emissions from coal, oil and other fossil fuels.

“Clean coal, clean coal,” repeated Mr Trump, using up his quota of oxymorons for the week.